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Festival of Britain Set – The Dome of Discovery and Skylon
in 1951 various structures and pavilions were built around London and Great Britain to celebrate the nationwide Festival of Britain – a series of exhibits designed to lift the spirits of a war torn nation recovering from WWII and to encourage economic growth by promoting Britain's strengths in technology and engineering. At the heart of the Festival were Skylon and the Dome of Discovery; two truly great landmark structures built close to each other on the south bank of the River Thames in London... close to where the modern day engineering masterpiece, the London Eye now stands.
The Dome of Discovery was a large exhibition space, and was at the time the worlds largest dome. It had the appearance of a UFO visiting the city, with its silvery dome covering a bowl beneath, and supported by spindly legs.
Skylon (from Skyhook and Nylon... then a hi-tech new material!) was a metallic lozenge which reached a height of 90m and was suspended on wires above the ground so as to give the appearance of floating. Illuminated at night, Skylon, like the Dome looked like a sci-fi visitor on the low London skyline.
Sadly, both structures were demolished soon after the Exhibition closed. The dome was demolished in 1952, while Skylon lasted into 1953. It was Winston Churchill who ordered the destruction of these popular landmarks... yes, that Churchill. By all accounts he disliked the fact that they were an initiative of the government that preceded his. Politics eh?
It's taken me two and a half years to get this project in game... although I haven't worked on it continuously. Skylon was the very first BAT I showed in my BAT thread... and it was rubbish. After I'd learnt a few more things I came back to it, and it was better. After a long time tweaking and some technical issues, I'm finally ready to release it... and I am glad.
The models are as accurate as I could get them... given my current level of BATing ability. Because they were demolished sixty years ago, there are very vew photographs of the structures, and almost none in colour. I had to do a lot of re-imagining. I had no real references for the plaza area, so I had to design one completely from scratch... I went a little crazy with the circular array!
Full resolution pictures : Day | Darknite
Darknite version: The models contained are rendered for the darker night time environment created by SimFox's Day'n'Nite Modd.
This single download contains three lots. They are all traditional landmarks (no jobs – I didn't see the need) There's the Dome of Discovery – on a 10x10 lot. Then there are two versions of Skylon. One is an ortho version on a 4x3 lot, and the other is a 3x3 lot where the model is rotated 45 degrees. This version is for use opposite to the corners of the Dome, while the ortho version is for use centred on the edges. See the pics linked above for an illustration. Of course, it's up to you how you place them! I just did this for flexibility.
The lots all use custom props, which are contained in a small prop pack included in this download.
Installation: Just unzip all files into a folder in your; MyDocuments/SimCity4/Plugins
Dependencies: BSC Textures Vol01
Stats are in the readme.
Extra credit reading at Wikipedia : Dome | Skylon | Festival
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